


The Waiting Game

by finch (afinch)



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: world of the dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-07 16:03:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5462624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afinch/pseuds/finch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So it went, little stories just past the Harpies, time immortal, as they both waited for Lyra. </p><p>They waited.</p><p>They waited.</p><p>They waited.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Waiting Game

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snacky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snacky/gifts).



He was waiting.

"Don't worry," he said to the young child who came through looking terrified. "See all those people? Just follow them until the end; there's a way out. The Harpies will help, nothing to be afraid of, just tell them stories from your life."

Sometimes, people would sit with them and tell their stories to him before they were ready to tell them to the Harpies. Will figured people needed to confess their stories to another human first, and some even asked his forgiveness. Neither he nor the Harpies could grant it, though, and many left Will just as uncomforted as they had been when they first arrived.

He couldn't help that.

Then there were those who wanted him to go with them.

"You can't delay it forever, bra," said the man about as old as him. "No sense to just sit there, gotta embrace it, yea? I will go with you, come, we will go together."

Every time, it ended the same way. He would politely bid farewell to the person and send them on their journey. 

And he would wait. 

There were people he knew who stopped by of course, and people who had fought against him in the war, and people who knew his face, but couldn't tell him why. He was a second guardian, after the Harpies, who gave him a wide berth. They'd gotten a lot nicer than his first meeting with them. The intervening decades had done the both of them some good. Even Gracious Wings stopped by from time to time to say hello.

"What if you're here for decades?" asked one of the Harpies. Will just shrugged, "Then I'll wait for decades."

"You could wait by the exit," the harpy said, but Will shook his head. "She knows we'll wait for each other here."

They all knew his story - he'd told it to the Harpies over and over again, and to those who wanted to wait before taking the journey themselves. 

He was all right with his role, which never dulled as time ticked by. 

He could wait. 

Things got a little more difficult when his wife showed up. 

"This is how you described it." It was the first thing she said, before falling into his arms. 

"The Harpies are nicer this time around," Will said with a light smile. "I'm glad you finally see I was telling the truth."

"And you waited for me!"

Here Will faltered. "No, not you. The woman I was here with, before, when we were children."

"Lyra, the girl who doesn't exist?" His wife asked. It had been a bit of contention for them their entire marriage. When Alice's illness started to take hold, his wife had firmly decided she inherited it from Will. 

"She's real. Just like this place is real. The separate world, the boat, the Harpies, the line of ghosts, all moving towards an unseen exit … it's all here, my love. One day, Lyra will too. You may wait with me, or you can continue on, but after you stopped me from going to the bench-"

"Well, it wasn't doing Alice any good!"

Will held up a hand, and she quieted. "I _promised_ ," he said, his voice thick, his eyes dark and haunting. He knew she was scared when she looked in his eyes, sometimes. The way the Witch had been unsettled, and the bear soothed.

"Will," his wife said softly, as though this were a fight they'd had many times. "I fell in love with all of you, but this - we're together again - do you have to make it the hardest part of you to love?"

He took a deep breath, and deliberately relaxed his shoulders. His wife wasn't Lyra, but she filled pieces of him he thought would lay empty forever. 

"Remember the rainbow at our wedding?" he asked.

She smiled, "Oh, you said it was a sign the angels were blessing us. I said I didn't believe in angels, and you said 'I know, that's why I married you' and I knew then, it was right, marrying you. And that damned cat. Surprised she's not here."

"Souls aren't allowed here," Will said softly. "She returned to Dust the moment I died."

"I thought I would break, the day of your death," his wife said softly. "I wanted so badly to join you, but I had to wait. It's been a long decade, Will."

He kissed the top of her head, "I'm glad you're here. I'm glad I am waiting."

"I will wait with you?" she said, her voice uncertain. "I vowed to stay by your side forever." 

"I would like that," Will said. 

They were waiting. 

His wife gave directions too, when he was engaged with someone else. Sometimes she would engage people as well. Mostly they talked, his wife for the first time open to the idea of Lyra and Will visiting this world when he was a child. 

"And none of it anyone ever knew about?"

"The Witches did. The angels did. Mary did."

"Do you think Mary is waiting for anyone?"

Will smiled, "She has a long wait, if she is. Serafina was only about 300 during the war."

"Only," his wife scoffed, but she had a twinkle in her eye. She was starting to enjoy herself.

"I think Mary would have wanted to go see Atal - it's in their world, the exit. Something tells me Atal would know when Mary's time had come. They were close."

"Not as close as the witch?"

"Serafina and Mary … they had a special bond. Mary … well, you know Mary."

His wife nodded, "The ex-nun scientist who lost her heart the day she took you in. And then never explained what that meant, ever. She was so good with children though. She would have made a fantastic mother."

"She was a fantastic mother," Will said quietly. His wife touched his arm briefly, but did not say anything. Will cleared the silence, "Remember when Digger had her litter and the neighbours complained for days?"

So it went, little stories just past the Harpies, time immortal, as they both waited for Lyra. 

They waited.

They waited.

They waited.

"Do you think she's already come?" his wife asked.

Will shook his head, "She would wait. Right here." He didn't doubt, not for a moment, that she would come. It was funny, it was nice that he and his wife had time - time they never seemed to have when they were alive - to become closer than they had ever been. It was a gift, he decided. A gift from Lyra to them, a gift of her living a long and full life. 

One day, there she was.

Will hardly knew what he was doing before he ran over to her, holding her tightly.

"I knew you'd wait," Lyra breathed. "I knew it. You've been waiting a long time, Pan felt it, an' I felt it too, but not as much as him, he was distraught for days, but I knew you'd wait. All this time, I knew you would."

"Lyra," was all Will said, softly, over and over again, like a prayer.

They did not let go of each other for a long time. 

Lyra noticed her first, watching them intently, almost glaring. 

"Oh," Will said quietly. "Lyra, this is my wife." 

Lyra smiled, a genuine smile, almost an impish grin. Before Will could stop her, she was striding over to the other woman.

"Hullo. I'm Lyra. Has Will told you about me?"

Her glare disappeared as Lyra spoke. "I never believed him," she whispered. 

Lyra didn't get angry, which Will didn't expect. "Lord Costa never believed me either. Even after all the horrors he'd seen. Made for some tense relationship between the land-folk and the Gyptian for a few decades, but we worked through it."

"You loved him? At 12?"

"Remember the magic of your first kiss, how the world stood still and yours was the purest love in all of existence?"

Will's wife did not look impressed. "I think we had very different first kiss experiences."

Lyra looked deeply upset at this. "I'm sorry," she said, pain etched on her weathered face.

"The closest I came to that was marrying Will. And now it appears -"

"He loved you," Lyra interrupted, her voice fierce. "If he married you, he _loved_ you."

"But not as purely as he loved you."

It was a statement, and Lyra did not challenge it. While she had started confident, she now looked lost. Trying, she stated, "I never married. Not cos Will couldn't - I mean, I loved him, yes, but there were other men I loved."

"Did you have children?" 

Lyra smiled, "I did. Two boys, William and Lee."

"And you didn't marry their fathers?"

"Ach," Lyra dismissed with a wave of her hand. "It's not that I didn't love them, I could never actually settle down and marry. I think the only one I might have done it with was Will." She said this completely honestly, and without any shame. Lyra saw nothing wrong with being an unwed mother - and twice over at that, and Will admired her for that. In some ways, she was the same girl she had been seven decades earlier. 

" _My_ Will?"

Lyra again shrugged. "What we shared, what we did, the war we fought - my free spirit … anyway, that's all in the past. I'm glad you're with us. You must have meant a lot to Will. And it's not a detriment to your marriage that I might have - that who I was at 12 and how we were changed for it - by it - Will loved you. Our kiss changed the worlds. I don't know how you top that, but if you had children - some kisses only change small worlds, and that's okay too."

Will had, at this point, let his two loves talk. His wife was understandably frustrated, and Lyra's calm demeanor wasn't helping. When he and Lyra parted, they understood the other might fall in love, and the fire that still burned in Lyra wasn't directed at his wife, who had committed no crime other than to love him. 

"We had a daughter," Will said, breaking his silence. "Her name was Alice. You'd have liked her, she had a lot of fire in her."

Lyra's nose crinkled, "Had?"

Will shuffled his feet, "You know how my mum was sick? Well, Alice was sick too, I guess it maybe runs in the family or something. She had a lot of fire, but it burned her up inside and I couldn't - I was a doctor, see, helping people, and I couldn't save - she killed herself. She was only 31."

Lyra looked at the both of them; Will's eyes steely and determined, his wife's brimming with emotion. She reached out a hand to each of them. "It's time you joined her, then. It's been long enough."

They each took a hand, and the three joined the end of the line, which was steadily moving with purpose.

Gracious Wings called out to Will, but he did not look back; he held Lyra's hand tightly as they silently moved towards their return to Dust.


End file.
